Barrier layer effect of tantalum on the electromigration in sputtered copper films on hydrogen silsesguioxane and SiO2

As IC devices scale down to the submicron level, the resistance-capacitance (RC) time delays are the limitation to circuit speed. A solution is to use low dielectric constant materials and low resistivity materials. In this work, the influence of underlying barrier Ta on the electromigration (EM) of Cu on hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) and SiO₂ substrates was investigated. The presence of a Ta barrier not only improves the adhesion between Cu and dielectrics, but also enhances the crystallinity of Cu film and improves the Cu electromigration resistance. The activation energy obtained suggests a grain boundary migration mechanism and the current exponent calculated indicates the Joule heating effect.     

Isothermal interphase diffusion with consecutive reactions

For multi-step heterogeneous consecutive reactions affected entirely by interphase diffusion under isothermal condition, the equations for the effectiveness factors, the surface concentrations and the point yields were derived in terms of the Damkoehler numbers or the measurables from the mass balances set up on the assumption that the mass-transfer rate balances the surface-reaction rate at steady state. From the analyses of the equations derived, the effectiveness factors for the intermediate steps and the surface concentrations of intermediates were understood to be enhanced by the measurables inclusive of the concentrations and the mass-transfer coefficients. Then the effect of the concentrations was concluded to be most significant. The effects of these measurables to the effectiveness factors and the surface concentrations were qualitatively discussed for simple consecutive reactions and also for additive consecutive reactions. Especially, as for two-step additive consecutive reactions, the effects of measurables η Da and the concentrations to the effectiveness factors were examined with graphical presentations. Finally, the brief discussion of the dependency of the Damkoehler number upon reaction time and the effect of the Renolds number and diffusivity to the extent of the mass-transfer resistance were presented.     

Compact Dipole Antenna for Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting Service

A compact dipole antenna for the terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (TDMB) application is presented. The length of the antenna is about 0.06λ at the TDMB resonance frequency of 190 MHz. Miniaturization of the antenna is achieved by using meander structures and lumped elements. The proposed antenna has two resonance frequencies and covers the TDMB band from 174 MHz to 216 MHz in Korea. The antenna has good impedance bandwidth and radiation characteristics for the TDMB. The experimental results of the designed dipole antenna are presented and analyzed.     

BioFET sensor for detection of albumin in urine

Characterisation of a BioFET for detection of albumin in a mixture of human urine is presented. To avoid electrolyte effect of the urine, it was measured in PBS (phosphate buffer saline) at a fixed pH after albumin binding. The drain current was modulated by the albumin bound to the anti-albumin immobilised on the gate surface of the BioFET. The current variation ratio was likely to be proportional to the concentration of the albumin in the range 50-250 mg/1. The results show the feasibility of the BioFET as a urinary albumin sensor.     

Extensions of LDA by PCA mixture model and class-wise features

Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is a data discrimination technique that seeks transformation to maximize the ratio of the between-class scatter and the within-class scatter. While it has been successfully applied to several applications, it has two limitations, both concerning the underfitting problem. First, it fails to discriminate data with complex distributions since all data in each class are assumed to be distributed in the Gaussian manner. Second, it can lose class-wise information, since it produces only one transformation over the entire range of classes. We propose three extensions of LDA to overcome the above problems. The first extension overcomes the first problem by modelling the within-class scatter using a PCA mixture model that can represent more complex distribution. The second extension overcomes the second problem by taking different transformation for each class in order to provide class-wise features. The third extension combines these two modifications by representing each class in terms of the PCA mixture model and taking different transformation for each mixture component. It is shown that all our proposed extensions of LDA outperform LDA concerning classification errors for synthetic data classification, hand-written digit recognition, and alphabet recognition.     

Austenitizing treatment influence on the electrochemical corrosion behavior of 0.3C-14Cr-3Mo martensitic stainless steel

Effects of austenitizing treatment temperatures on aqueous corrosion properties of martensitic stainless steels were investigated by electrochemical tests (potentiodynamic test, potentiostatic test and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy), and surface analyses (optical microscopy and XRD). The results of potentiodynamic test revealed that the breakdown potential increased with the increased austenitizing temperature, indicating increased relative resistance to initiation of localized corrosion. EIS measurements showed that MSS3 (1030 °C) exhibits larger polarization resistance value than MSS1 (970 °C) and MSS2 (1000 °C) at passive and breakdown states. This was caused by decreasing the amount of Cr-rich M₂₃C₆ carbide which acts as preferential sites for pitting corrosion.     

High Gd Concentration GaGdN Grown at Low Temperatures

GaGdN layers were grown at temperatures below 300°C by radio-frequency plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on sapphire substrates. GaGdN samples with high Gd concentration as high as 12.5% were obtained by lowering the growth temperature. X-ray diffraction results showed no obvious secondary phase, which means that the phase separation can be suppressed by the growth at low temperatures. All samples, including those grown at room temperature, showed ferromagnetic characteristics. Photoluminescence emission was observed, though spectra exhibit broad and sharp luminescence bands related to many kinds of defects. It is suggested that electrons coming from defects, especially, nitrogen vacancy, stabilize ferromagnetism, and that the carrier-induced ferromagnetism occurs in the low-temperature-growth GaGdN.     

Floating-patch MEMS antennas on HRS substrate for millimetre-wave applications

Novel floating-patch micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) antennas are proposed for millimetre-wave applications. The floating-patch MEMS antennas are fabricated on a high resistivity silicon (HRS) substrate using surface micromachining technology. Simulation and experimental results for reflection coefficients and radiation patterns are presented.     

A transmit MIMO scheme with frequency domain pre-equalization for wireless frequency selective channels

In this paper, we introduce a transmit multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme with frequency domain pre-equalization for a multipath or frequency selective channel. In this scheme, MIMO processing in the frequency domain is performed at the transmitter or base station so that the receiver or mobile station only requires limited processing. This scheme provides high data rates and also inherits from the frequency domain equalization the property of relatively low complexity in severe multipath environments. The MIMO transmit processing is derived by minimizing the minimum mean square errors (MMSE), and expressions for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and error probability based on the Gaussian approximation of the interference term are provided. Some important associated issues, such as channel errors and computational complexity, are also investigated. Numerical simulations are also provided and these demonstrate the improved performance of our proposed scheme compared to other transmit MIMO schemes. In particular, they show that the proposed system can attain multipath or frequency diversity of the channel.     

Bias-temperature instabilities of polysilicon gate HfO/sub 2/ MOSFETs

Bias-temperature instabilities (BTI) of HfO/sub 2/ metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) have been systematically studied for the first time. NMOS positive BTI (PBTI) exhibited a more significant V/sub t/ instability than that of PMOS negative BTI (NBTI), and limited the lifetime of HfO/sub 2/ MOSFETs. Although high-temperature forming gas annealing (HT-FGA) improved the interface quality by passivating the interfacial states with hydrogen, BTI behaviors were not strongly affected by the technique. Charge pumping measurements were extensively used to investigate the nature of the BTI degradation, and it was found that V/sub t/ degradation of NMOS PBTI was primarily caused by charge trapping in bulk HfO/sub 2/ rather than interfacial degradation. Deuterium (D/sub 2/) annealing was found to be an excellent technique to improve BTI immunity as well as to enhance the mobility of HfO/sub 2/ MOSFETs.